Okay, I think I can comfortably continue this. Thank you for being patient with me during my ethical crisis, but after a bit of rest and exciting personal developments, I feel I can continue this.

A few things to point out here before we get to the next couple chapters:

• Apparently, all you need to do to change a girl’s mind is to grab her and kiss her. MEN, WE’VE BEEN DOING IT WRONG THIS ENTIRE TIME.
• Vineyards are sexy places? It makes sense, I guess. Trekkiegirl and I have a few choices for honeymoon ideas.
• Johnny Cash’s cover of Personal Jesus is probably the best thing ever. This has nothing to do with the review, I just wanted to mention it.
• We miss you, Johnny.
• What I’m upset at most about the whole rageout incident last post is that I wasted a Chewbacca Defense. Those things don’t grow on trees!

I’d also like to mention that from here on out, it gets a bit Not Safe For Work. Which, for erotic fiction, is a bit of a given, but a disclaimer is a disclaimer.

So, pretty much every bit of Independent Woman Ideology Angela has accrued has been thrown out the window. Putting the entire Fighting Hard Against An Attacker Oh Wait He Kissed Me So It’s Okay situation aside, her next instinct is to figure out how to get the most out of this big strong man without letting him actually have sex with her.

Her solution?

Lots of dry humping.

Magnus had not tupped a girl fully clothed since he was a boy, and, oh, the sheer joy of it was beyond description.

[…] She was nigh wailing her pleasure as her woman’s cleft slid back and forth along the ridge of his erection.

After which, of course, she then firmly denies that she is his destiny and demands that the matter be closed. Because, after all, there is the simple matter of Magnus’s vow of celibacy.

But no! Magnus is gleeful!

“I mean, a man could still be called celibate if there is no completion… that is, if there is no satisfaction…” Any more satisfaction and my eyes will be permanently crossed. He stopped himself and exhaled with frustration at his difficulty explaining himself. “Oh, hell, what I mean to say is that the vow is still intact if there is no insertion of a male part into a female part. What we did is called a dry tup in my country, and, for a certainty, does not count.”

Oh, Magnus. Proof that men everywhen will delude themselves into thinking that women care about loopholes. “Blowjobs aren’t cheating.” “It doesn’t count if they’re in another area code.” “Cybering is just masturbation.” “I thought she was you.”

Look, ladies, is there anyone that still believes this? Did anyone ever in the first place? I may not be wholly representative of the jackass male population, but these things have always struck me as extremely flimsy excuses to “justify” various things.

But! I do feel slightly better about Angela now, because even she sees that as a ridiculous thing to say, and she starts laughing in his face. Step it up, girl.

But wait, where’s Grandma Rose during all this? Watching the whole thing from the window like the perverted voyeur she is. Not content to watch her granddaughter vike off, she then swears to make MORE PHYSICS-BENDING PRAYERS TO THE VIRGIN MARY. Why? To ensure that she and Magnus hit it off.

And boy, do they ever. Despite Angela’s grumbling the next morning (including a shameless 9/11 reference that I am saddened to see exploited here), she can’t help but feel attracted all the more to the man as she pulls him away from tilling her fields to, well, till her fields. Fully clothed, of course.

During all this, of course, Grandma Rose keeps taking the children into the city to go shopping, and the viklings are getting more and more Americanized by the day, to Magnus’s consternation. He keeps worrying about what happens when they make it back to The Norselands, where there is none of this stuff available, but then he gets on a mental tangent about how wonderful zippers are. No, seriously, a whole huge paragraph devoted to zippers.

He and Angela continue to give each other false starts throughout the next day, and finally resolve to have a conversation about it that night in the gazebo. To which Angela shows up in a bathrobe, and silky lingerie underneath. After professing she only wanted to talk.

Yeah. Try that again, love.

It is there and then that they strike The Deal™, which is that they can titillate each other all they want, but all they can do is dry hump each other until eternity. No sex, Angela insists.

And then? The dry humping. Oh, god. Pages and pages of constant and frequent instances of “almost-sex”, as they call it, to the point where it looks almost Seussian.

She will do him on a tractor
Timeliness is not a factor
She will do him for a song
She will do him all night long

I’d like to take a moment here and talk about how Sandra Hill loves to take metaphors that work and run them into the ground. I’ve mentioned it before – Magnus is a tree we get it already – but it bears mentioning again. Not only does she make the tree comparison again – and his magnificent branch – but Magnus starts going on and on about his “tent pole”.

Even in this dim light – even with his jaw-keys – he could see his man part standing up like a tent pole. He could also see Angela trying her best not to notice his…uh, tent pole, which was an impossibility. ‘Twould be like ignoring an elephant in a brass tub. ‘Twas one of the best things about Vikings, his brother Geirolf always said – their tent poles.

I am never making this up.

Anyway, they go on about eight times total in the span of two days – I counted – until Monday comes and Angela leaves for the city to go to work.

It’s then that Magnus, grabbing a bottle of six-year-old wine, sees the label declaring its vintage as 1997. Which means he is just now finding out that it is 2003.

fffffuuuuuuuuuuuu—

But wait! Torolf, his older son, mentions that he found out about this Wonderful Device that prevents pregnancy during sex. A fact that Magnus completely understands that Angela knew, and declares that she LIED to him, that the dry humping was NOT the only way he could keep his celibacy. As far as he can tell, at least; he recognizes that he should probably ask someone else about vows like that.

So he goes off to ask someone if they know more about vows.

FFFFFFFFFFUUUUUU–

Awesome Euphemisms
(Or, Light up the Dayna Signal)

• […] her woman cleft rode the hard ridge of his manhood.
• “You could say I am randy as a springtime bull whose blood has been heating all winter long. And believe you me, it has been a long winter for me.”
• […] and Angela was faced with an astounding fact. Magnus resembled a tree in height; she’d known that from the first. Now she knew that he had some very impressive branches…one in particular.